


A Different Spectacle

by hw_campbell_jr



Series: Four Ducks on a Pond [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Fictional Religion & Theology, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:48:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21957652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hw_campbell_jr/pseuds/hw_campbell_jr
Summary: Pt. 2 of a story in which the Heavenly Husbands contemplate taking a couple of fangy ducklings under their wings.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac
Series: Four Ducks on a Pond [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1580737
Comments: 14
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

Over three days in 1997, 39 people committed suicide in California using anti-seizure medication washed down with pudding, vodka, and, as if those hadn’t been sufficient, asphyxiation by plastic bag.

They did this in order to ascend from their corporeal bodies, that their spirits might hitch a ride on a spaceship travelling in the tail of the comet Hale-Bopp. There was no spaceship there really, of course. The suicides had only thought there was because they were part of a cult. The cult was named Heaven’s Gate. It had, as far as Aziraphale could determine, nothing at all to do with actual Heaven.

Aziraphale had in fact determined that at the time Heaven’s Gate had made the news. The strange details had stuck in his mind, as he supposed they had in everyone’s. The matching shoes, the organization, the same exact amount of money in each cult-member’s pocket, these were such curious things that a person couldn’t help but remember them. Even though Aziraphale knew it wouldn’t amount to anything, he had found himself checking some things out anyway, just to be certain. He had established the same thing as he always did: humans called all sorts of things after Heaven. Even cults. Especially cults. It didn’t mean much.

He didn’t know why he had waited so long to read the full story about it, however. Actually, he didn’t know why he was reading the full story about it at all, however far or close to the time it was. It was grim reading, and not the sort of thing he would have historically favoured at night. And yet, here he was, after the gallery, after the Ritz and those poor tragic vampires: reading in bed about Heaven’s Gate.

This book was part of the growing but similarly inexplicable pile of books he was amassing next to the bed in the South Downs, along with the Branch Davidians, Jonestown, and the Order of the Solar Temple. He didn’t know how they’d got there exactly, just that he’d been involved. Very odd indeed, really, that was. As if some part of him had bought these things without telling any of the rest of him why it was doing it. Left hand not knowing what the right was doing and all that. This understanding of human naming conventions had bothered him, yes, but he’d resolved that at the time, he thought. Not specific. Not relevant enough to drive this recent obsession.

As always, there seemed a certain amount of implicit… not _cruelty_ exactly, but certainly some kind of unkindness to drip-feeding humans such information about Heaven that they could build strange ideals out of it without ever knowing anything concrete about its workings. The cult hadn’t been the first time that thought had occurred to him, nor did he expect it to be the last.

Matthew 6:3, that line about the hands. Matthew, being Matthew, had thought it a proper state of affairs, most holy indeed for humans to go about charitable giving in some sort of bizarre state of extremity delirium. Another little cruelty wrought by this need-to-know withholding of Heaven’s love, another little impossible expectation, as if doing good works didn’t even properly count as good unless you did them in a certain way, a way in which you wouldn’t be told about.

That was the context, of course. Charitable giving. Matthew had very little to say about buying books about cults you didn’t know why you wanted to read. Or actually _initially_ you didn’t know why you wanted to read, because then sometime in the night you figured it out and wished you hadn’t because it came with such confusing and painful embarrassment that the best option was to try to pretend you still didn’t know.

So the subject was compelling, so what? That’s all Aziraphale ever had to admit, to himself or anyone who asked. So what if he read about cults? So what if he read somewhat compulsively about cults the same way he’d read compulsively from prophecy? These subjects were interesting. Enthralling human phenomena. That was all they were and there was no obligation to say anything else. No obligation at all.

He knew he needed to do something to jog himself, if only between chapters, or between breaking with this book and picking up something else. He fumbled around for his watch to check, but found it wasn’t close enough to morning to wait patiently for it. That was a bother. It seemed unkind to move with Crowley’s sprawling, unconscious form laid out beside him. Crowley woke up easily, for reasons Aziraphale wanted to be mindful of. Agitating him out of sleep seemed like its own kind of cruelty.

He checked his messages, on his phone. The chapter had come from Caroline, on his email. He hoped she was asleep by now. He thought of calling her to check if she was, but if she was asleep it would wake her up and if she wasn’t it would seem deeply abnormal. It felt important to seem normal at this exact moment, for some reason that, like the cult-reading, he intended to deliberately avoid understanding, at least for now.

The sensible thing to do would be to get up and make cocoa. Take a short walk on the streets as he would have done in London under similar circumstances. When he lived in London by himself and didn’t even stay over anywhere, it didn’t wake anyone up if he got out of bed at night, and in consequence he never felt this jangling sense of being a trapped animal who temporarily wanted to bite off whichever one of his hands was the bad one according to Matthew.

Awful. An absolutely awful thought. Brought on by so fully absorbing the sordid details of the California compound, no doubt. He took a deep, hard breath and then he got up, as carefully as he could.

Crowley didn’t wake. He screwed up his face and rolled around a little, but his eyes stayed shut. Aziraphale thought about kissing his head, decided against it, and then went downstairs.

It was deathly quiet in the cottage now. If you listened carefully, you could hear the ocean, though human ears probably could not have done so at this distance. You could also hear the moonlight, which humans unequivocally could not hear at any distance. Moonlight had a silvery sound. Sharp. It sounded the way it looked, in fact, Aziraphale thought. Secret. Icy. More Heavenly than sun by far, and that made sense because Hell was hot and Heaven was perfectly cold. He followed it out onto the porch, then out into the yard, where he stood on the wet grass for a while, looking out into the dark. The stars prickled everywhere and he wondered what it would be like to see a comet with human eyes. Something that looked like light on fire but in fact was made of ice, tearing a hole in the sky.

The chickens were sleeping. One funny thing about chickens was how they put themselves to bed when the sun went down. Probably another reason Crowley liked them. 

Momentarily, Aziraphale put himself to bed too.


	2. Chapter 2

You could tell when Crowley was about to wake up. It was an _event_. He’d start rolling around more than usual and he’d scrunch his face up, making the closed-eyes version of the expression he made when someone he didn’t like was trying to talk to him. Then he’d make noises. He’d let out a series of small cranky “hmpfs” and whines, perhaps a growl or two while thrashing if the transition to waking life was especially stressful, which Aziraphale gathered it sometimes was.

It was hard to hold that against him. Grumbling or not, amid his noisy acrobatics, his hands would begin to move and his arms would cling, and he’d press himself into Aziraphale’s body with such fervor it was as if he needed something to hold himself on to before he could dare opening his eyes. That was far too sweet to be overlooked. The first time Aziraphale had seen this performance, in fact, he had not been able to stop wondering what Crowley clung to when he was alone, and that had pierced his heart hopelessly so that he had not been able to stop himself from fussing.

That had been at Crowley’s London flat. The morning after he had first said he would stay. He remembered it vividly, being stirred abruptly from his morning perusal of his phone messages and various internet forums by being snuggled against and growled into and then finally gripped by this rumpled and un-put-together creature, some winding little animal who at once seemed scarcely like Crowley at all and more precisely like Crowley than he’d ever been. _Hopelessly_ adorable. Painful in such a strange way. Aziraphale had clucked and cooed unreservedly, he had rolled Crowley out to kiss and fondle him better, touching him everywhere, and Crowley had borne that good-humoredly and with only the slightest resistance until eventually he had started laughing about it.

They had kissed some more then, of course. Kissed rather a lot, if Aziraphale remembered it correctly, which he thought he did. Since then, while it had decreased _slightly_ in the dramatics of its execution, that instinct to fuss in the morning had never deserted him.

Or, it had not deserted him before now. Ordinarily, there was a pang of that at the very least, a flutter of tenderness at watching Crowley wriggle his way back to life like a helpless animal. Its cold little absence on this occasion was nauseating. Where it should have been, he felt nothing, except a prickling, terrified awareness that he should feel something. Some sort of important car wouldn’t start, but it insisted upon squatting in his stomach, spinning its wheels anyway.

His skin felt odd too. Staticky and cold and not quite completely webbed together.

Beastly feeling. He choked it down, physically, attempting to reset the morning to ordinary, to be ordinary in his ordinary bed, but it made a sound doing that and Crowley noticed. He moved back from Aziraphale’s body and opened his eyes. They were just visible. The lower part of his face was covered by blankets.

“Good morning, dear,” Aziraphale said, swallowing. “How did you sleep?”

“Eh,” Crowley said, staring. He barely blinked.

“Were you dreaming?”

“Not really. Sort of. You alright?”

“How was it?”

“You alright?”

“Of course I am. Just fine. Just doing the usual.”

“Something happen?”

“Nothing happens when you’re asleep, dearest. If something did happen, I’d wake you up right away.”

“I know that,” Crowley said. “Not what I meant.”

It was exactly what he meant, but Aziraphale let him fib about it anyway. Crowley didn’t have to admit to everything all the time either, especially not first thing in the morning when he’d just woken up. Positively uncivilized to go around forcing people to _admit_ things.

There was a little tenderness at that, at that little bit of defensive lying. Especially as Crowley fluttered his eyes closed again and wound his arms around Aziraphale’s middle, yawning. He was very, very warm. Warm from sleep but also just warm because of Crowley.

Aziraphale put his book down so he could pet him properly and Crowley wriggled his head up onto his chest and accepted it. His hair was so soft before he put products in it. Silky. “Will I read you something?” Aziraphale asked him. “Help you get a bit more sleep?”

Crowley frowned like he was thinking about it, but then he opened his eyes again. “No, you’re alright. I’m up now. Got things to do.”

“What’ve you got to do?”

“Might see about the garden. Can’t decide if I can be bothered with compost or not. Thought I’d go to the garden center anyway, maybe think about it.”

“What’s the reason not to do it?”

“Dunno really. It seems like a sensible thing to do, better than just wasting things, and the chemistry part is interesting but. Dunno. If you do it right, it’s not supposed to smell. I just… don’t really want to.”

“You shouldn’t do a single thing you don’t want to do,” Aziraphale said, continuing to pet him. “Not one thing.” 

Crowley snorted. His eyes had gone back to being closed and he squirmed around on Aziraphale’s body like a cat trying to get the best angle. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but Aziraphale didn’t entirely resent it either. Ordinarily it was his favorite thing in the world.

“We’ve got to have a talk about those baby werewolves,” Crowley said. “You’re going to make me do that.”

“Vampires. And not _make_ you.”

“What were you reading anyway? Last night? What were going to read for me?”

“I mean it,” Aziraphale said. “You’re too precious. Only things you want, from now on.”

“What if I want to hear about your book?” Crowley said.

Aziraphale actually, stupidly prayed for a split second that Crowley wouldn’t feel him cold sweating. But Crowley wasn’t trying to badger, wasn’t interrogating, wouldn’t notice that, Aziraphale didn’t think. Rather, he seemed to think he was being sweet. His smile was visible, even from this angle. And his arms had got tighter and one of his legs had found its way over Aziraphale’s. He was coiling now, not like a cat anymore, but like the human-shaped python he actually was. It _was_ sweet. There was no reason it should have chilled him.

“It’s about Heaven’s Gate,” Aziraphale told him. Better to just tell him. Like ripping off a bandaid.

“What?”

“Sort of… an aliens and suicide cult. Famous in the 90s.” 

“Right,” Crowley said.

“Rather a grim affair.”

“Yeah, I don’t wonder. What number cult book is this now anyway?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I make it seven,” Crowley said, in an odd tone. It wasn’t _exactly_ confrontational, but it wasn’t neutral either. “But it’s more if you count the America stuff. Do you count the America stuff? You know, about economics and uh, Jesus? That’s cult- _like_ but is it a cult per _se_? Pardon my Latin. Any good?”

“Is what good?”

“The, uh, _book_?”

“Oh yes, fine.”

“Oh, the _sneakers_ ,” Crowley said, suddenly. “They all had sneakers on for the suicide thing. I remember it from the news. Right? What a weird fucking thing.”

“That’s right, it was quite a story. They claimed to be ascending to board a spaceship in the tail of a comet.”

“That creepy eye contact guy and his haircut though,” Crowley said, and he shuddered. “You don’t forget that.”

“Yes.”

“He’d have fit right in at work.”

“Oh yes, he’d have fit without question. That’s even clearer in the book. You get a sense.”

“Especially because of the haircut. Very important. You know, we invented fashion disasters. To be irritating.”

“Did you? I thought that was one of ours. You know, to inspire humbleness.”

“Depends on your definition, probably. One man’s disaster is another man’s haute couture.”

Crowley said that quite dryly. It probably wasn’t even meant as much of a joke. But its conspiratorial nature induced such relief that Aziraphale smiled at it anyway and Crowley looked up and smiled back. Apparently pacified, he wormed up on Aziraphale’s chest a little more. One of his hands had started to move in an intentional way. “And you thought that would be a soothing morning read-aloud, did you?”

“I’d have read you something else.”

“No, I’m interested now,” Crowley said. His hand had trailed down and was tracing the line of Aziraphale’s belly, his fingers skating along that soft place just underneath it. “What planet were the aliens supposed to be from? Or was it dimensional thing? There’s lots of kinds of aliens. Important to be specific.”

Aziraphale smiled. “Oh, well, if that’s really what you like, I’ll read you some of it.”

“Just tell me highlights. Don’t want to go back to sleep. I’m up. I’m awake.”

“Highlights?” Aziraphale said. “Oh dear, I’m not sure there are any. It’s almost entirely lowlights. Not exactly cheering stuff.”

“Just outline the story for me. Where were they meant to go on that spaceship anyway?”

“Heaven. Hence the name.”

“Oh, sure, of course, just go to Heaven in a spaceship.”

“Yes, well.”

“Idiots,” Crowley said, smiling again. He kissed Aziraphale’s chest. “When they could pick any planet. Someone should have told them to think of a better place to go.”

“They saw this as an extension of their efforts to become like angels,” Aziraphale said. “They wanted to be angels.”

“So, adorable and slutty?” Crowley said. His grin twinkled and he moved his hands again. One of them had started sliding, trailing up over Aziraphale’s belly then up again to cup and knead the softest part of his chest.

“No sex at all,” Aziraphale told him. He didn’t understand why he wasn’t reacting to being touched. He didn’t want to think about it, really. As such, he was not quite _pointedly_ ignoring the overture, but he was certainly ignoring it. “No individuality either. I mean to say that individuality, in those specific terms, was highly discouraged.”

Crowley gave him an odd look. “Right. So they’d not met any decent angels then.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Maybe they saw memos from your work?”

Aziraphale laughed, weakly. “Yes, perhaps.”

“Or, alright, fair enough, maybe they’d met literally any other angel than you.”

“Oh now, dear, that’s not… they’re not all…”

“Yes they are,” Crowley said, with conviction. His hands had stopped where they were.

“Well, listen, I don’t want to argue about it, but I think I would have a better ability to judge that, don’t you?”

“No.”

“I have met and worked with more angels than you have and I…”

“Why’re you bothering to defend them? They’re not going to let you back in.”

That was a startlingly mean thing for Crowley to say, even this early in the morning. And he knew it too. A little flicker of shame flashed across his face before he forced it down by glaring and pressed his face back into Aziraphale’s chest. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean it. Just… morning.”

Aziraphale did not acknowledge the apology. He drew his shoulders back, as much as he could in bed with Crowley on top of him. “It’s not defense so much as it’s an appeal to graciousness and accuracy, neither of which should require so much effort, thank you.”

“Oh, shut up,” Crowley snapped.

“ _I beg your pardon_?”

“Shut _up_ ,” Crowley said again. “I don't care if I’m not gracious _or_ accurate. Leave me alone. I thought you were reading that _Ifrit_ novel?”

And _I_ thought you didn’t mean it and wanted to apologize, Aziraphale _almost_ said, but he stopped himself in the nick of time. “I am, but I’m rationing it,” he said instead.

He had no idea why he felt so strongly that he needed to tread carefully, nor why the need had arisen so suddenly. Well, not _no_ idea, but _mostly_ no idea. And at any rate it was unjustified on Crowley’s part and so he chose to continue ignoring it. “And I read a bit of Wuthering Heights again,” he added. “In case I was wrong.”

“Were you?”

“Not so far.”

“Okay.”

“My dear, you’re in quite a mood. Are you quite sure you slept alright?”

“Yes,” Crowley said. Then he glared again. For seemingly no reason. But also obviously every reason. Aziraphale rolled his eyes. 

“I’m going to make a cup of tea,” he said. “I’ll bring it back. I do need to talk to you about the vampires, you were right about that. Would you like a cup too? Or some coffee? Perhaps a peeled grape nested in sheets of gold leaf? Do feel free to ask for anything that might help you adjust your attitude.”

Crowley snorted, which, because he was still glaring had an aura of menace to it. That aura seemed wholly intentional, actually, and Aziraphale teetered on the verge of demanding he cut it out. But then a yawn cracked Crowley’s face open and his fangs were helplessly visible and it was impossible not to notice how sleepy he still looked and how anxious being awake made him. With his ruffled hair and his chin scratchy against Aziraphale’s chest, he looked like what he was again: a winding little animal, un-put-together.

He needed a little assistance sometimes, Crowley did, with basic things like this. Aziraphale clucked at him. “Oh dear. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a little more nap time?”

" _Nap time_?” Crowley said. “No I don’t need _nap time_. I’m not a human baby, Aziraphale. Fucking… _nap time_?”

Aziraphale restrained himself from telling him that he certainly _sounded_ like a human baby and continued getting out of the bed. “We do need to talk about the vampires. Are you sure you don’t want something?”

“Yes,” Crowley said. He yawned a third time. Now he’d started to look cross with himself rather than anyone else.

“It would be absolutely no trouble.”

“I know.”

“I’ll bring an extra cup in case you do decide you want one, how’s that?”

“Can’I’ve a boiled egg?”

Aziraphale had not expected that. It was so sudden and so perfectly pitched between sullen and sweetness that his heart did a little flip at it. When it landed, it did so on firm – yet very, very soft – terrain and he felt himself smiling, in earnest. Rather as if someone had dropped an egg inside his chest and it had broken. “Of course you can, dear. With soldiers?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Crowley said. “Not gonna eat it with my fingers.”

That was Crowley’s second little bit of a lie this morning, because he would definitely eat it with his fingers. Crowley quite liked, actually, a nice boiled egg, and that was how he ate it.

He had of course been unimpressed by boiled eggs initially, as he was by all foodstuffs, but the first time Aziraphale had had a boiled egg in the South Downs he certainly wasn’t going to make one for himself without also making one for Crowley – that would have been very rude even if it did just get thrown away. And so, he made them one each, with buttered toast cut into perfect soldiers, and made two trays, and presented Crowley with his one without ceremony. He climbed back into bed and opened his book again. Then, he’d been reading Bowler on the Prosperity Gospel. Economics and Jesus.

“What’s this?” Crowley had asked him, on that day.

“Nice boiled egg,” Aziraphale had said. “We’ve got to use up those eggs somehow. There’s four chickens. That’s four eggs a day, every day.”

“I’ll use them for crepes or something.”

“You can’t use all of them for that.”

“I don’t want a boiled egg.”

“Then don’t eat it.”

“How am I supposed to eat it? Do you want me to just put a whole egg in my mouth? Why’d you cut the toast like this?”

“It’s for dipping,” Aziraphale said. “Have you never had a boiled egg and soldiers before? That’s really terribly deprived.”

“Why’re they called _soldiers_?”

“Because they’re lined up… in formation… oh… never mind.”

“Do I peel the egg? What’s happening?”

Aziraphale wasn’t sure whether to roll his eyes or laugh. “Oh dear, here,” he said.

He put his book down and leaned over. With a deft and practiced touch he cracked the top off Crowley’s egg and set it down on his plate. He picked up the pinches of salt and pepper from the plate and sprinkled them over, then leaned back to his own efforts. “There you are, dear,” he said. “Have at it.”

“So what, like…” Crowley said. He sucked on his bottom lip for a moment. And then, to Aziraphale’s dismay, the next thing he did was slide a finger slowly into the center of the egg.

It appeared to give him a little shock. Then he grinned. It was an extremely salacious grin. “Warm.”

“No, dear,” Aziraphale said. “With the toast. Or the spoon.”

“ _Disgusting_.”

“It’s a nice boiled egg! Stop doing that and dip the toast in it.”

Crowley had put the finger that had been in the egg in his mouth. He’d sucked it. The expression he made was somehow simultaneously innocent and positively filthy. It absolutely _had_ been disgusting. But ever after, he had quite liked boiled eggs.

This was perhaps one other way in which chickens were different: the ease and reliability with which they produced edible breakfast eggs. Aziraphale didn’t know if you could keep ducks in a pen in order to harvest their blessings but he suspected you couldn’t – too irritable by half. You had to pay attention to what specific creatures were like. For example, certain other fussy, grouchy creatures still wouldn’t ask for things, not really, even if they liked them. And when such a creature admitted to liking and wanting something, and he asked for it in this sweet, prickly, wide-eyed sleepy way, you made him a boiled egg. _Even_ if he’d been being, in no uncertain terms, an intractable shit.

He couldn't really help that anyway, not first thing. And besides, a boiled egg was only fair. Crowley was _excellent_ at breakfast in bed even if he wasn’t very good at eating it. He wasn’t just musing about the crepes. 

“Listen, sorry,” he, Crowley, said, when Aziraphale got back with the egg. “Read about cults if you want to.”

Aziraphale was not eager to start that conversation up again. “That’s a very fresh egg,” he told Crowley. “Eat it quickly.”

“Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it.”

“Nice of you to make me an egg.”

“My dearest, it gives me an earnest pleasure to do so. Eat it before it gets cold.”

“Aren’t you having one?”

“Not really in the mood.”

“Are you…” Crowley started to say but then he seemed to think better of it. Aziraphale almost asked him to finish his thought, but then realized he absolutely did not want him to so picked up his book and his cup of tea.

He couldn’t really concentrate on it. He watched Crowley crack the top of the egg. Crowley still wasn’t very good at it, not really. He didn’t have the patience for taking the top off an egg shell when there was an egg inside it. He also seemed to notice Aziraphale watching. “It’s not really the same if you’re not having one,” he said. “I don’t know how to eat an egg by myself. Will you please just eat this one bit of toast?”

It was such an earnest peace offering Aziraphale couldn’t have refused it if he’d wanted to. He sighed took the toast and saw that he was also being offered the egg to dip it in, so he did.

“Listen, sorry about before,” Crowley said, as Aziraphale bit into the toast. “Shitty thing to say. Sorry.”

“It’s alright, dearest. I know you’re not a morning creature.”

“Still. Don’t have to be, you know. A shit.”

“Don’t you? I thought being a shit was one of your Things? Part of the Persona.”

“Shut up!”

“ _Are_ you apologizing?” 

“ _Yes!”_

“Rather hard to tell.”

Crowley opened his mouth to splutter, but Aziraphale ginned at him. “Alright darling. Let me have another bit of toast.”

“Another _soldier,_ ” Crowley said, primly.

“Yes, just so.”

When he leaned over to take it, Crowley put his arm around him and pressed his cheek into his hair. It felt furtive and a little desperate and that tugged at Aziraphale’s heart too. He’d upset things, he thought. They needed correction. He squeezed Crowley around the waist, and then leaned up to kiss him and wondered how it could possibly be comforting or romantic to taste boiled egg on your lover’s tongue, but found it absolutely was. Indeed, that soft, warm, egg-flavored kiss seemed to reset things entirely and favorably, at least for the time being.

When Crowley leaned back, Aziraphale stroked his scratchy face and gave him a look that he hoped conveyed forgiveness and affection. He did not feel cold anymore. A little, perhaps, but not really. Just the lag of the night, and that could be pushed away by curling into him. “Perhaps I am hungry, after all.”

“You can finish my egg.”

“No, darling, it’s yours. I’ll have something in a minute. Tell me what you think about the vampires.”

It seemed as if Crowley wanted to ask something, but then he frowned. He frowned like that for almost a full minute and then he sucked yolk off his fingers and said something else instead. “I think there’s practicalities. Right? They drink blood. Human blood. So what are we going to do about that? We can’t just let them swan about the village killing people. For a start, we live here, and for a second thing, it’s not on, really, is it? People in the village didn’t ask for that.”

“I don’t suppose anyone asks for it,” Aziraphale said. “I suspect very few people wake up in the morning and think to themselves, I hope I’m bitten by a vampire tonight.”

“You’d be surprised. But you’re right, they probably don’t want to die.”

“I don’t think I would be _entirely_ surprised, actually, but… well, let’s not discuss it.”

“Oh, can we discuss it a little? If you really want to read me something, you should read me some of that. Vampire porn. Read me 50 Shades of Twilight or whatever, I knew there was a point to books after all.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Don’t be filthy.”

“I like being filthy. And so do you.”

“I do see what you mean though,” Aziraphale said, ignoring that. “It’s… a small population, too small for that. That really won’t do at all. It’s a puzzler.”

“What if they just drank a bit and didn’t kill anybody?”

“Can they do that? I’m not sure how I feel about it anyway but I also don’t know if they can.”

“You’re asking me? I don’t know if they can, you’re the supernatural youth counselor.”

“Excuse me, I am no such…”

“What about from a hospital?” Crowley said. “Bags of it, you know. Kind of a snack pack for the vamp on the go.”

Aziraphale snorted. It was, after all, a pretty bad joke. “Can they have it if it’s not fresh?”

“Maybe? Dunno really, you’d have to ask them.”

“That seems such a rude thing to ask. ‘My dear, would you mind awfully… can you suck blood out of a hospital donation bag?’”

“Thing is, angel,” Crowley said, “the practicality’s not going to go away just because it’s rude to ask. If you want them to come here, that’s point number one and we can’t invite them till we’ve figured it out.”

“Could just miracle it up?”

“I dunno,” Crowley said. “Miracling up quantities of human blood seems… well I mean I don’t know what you think but to me it seems like something that’s setting a precedent. You know, a dark and ominous omens sort of precedent that might draw the type of attention from the type of people we’re specifically trying to avoid at this juncture.”

Aziraphale felt that chill again. He tried not to let on. “Hmm, yes, I see what you mean. It’s all a bit… summoning the beast, really. Summoning the beast again, I should say. And yes, it could very likely summon attention.”

“We don’t want attention.”

“We most certainly do not.”

“Right so we can’t do that,” Crowley said. “Could they have sheep or something? Plenty of sheep around here. We could even get some sheep. I don’t mind sheep, I guess.”

“No, we asked them that, remember? They can live on animals but they don’t like to.”

“So what? They don’t have to like it. It’s not the Ritz.”

“So they’d be our guests. I don’t want them to spend the entire time malnourished.”

Crowley was running his finger around the inside of the now empty shell of the egg. Thinking. Extracting every last bit of yolk. Aziraphale half expected him to pop the shell in his mouth and swallow it. He was a snake, after all.

“Right,” Crowley said, putting the shell down at last. “Well I’ve got a guy. If they can have bags – surely they can have bags? Right? It’s just blood in a bag – I’m pretty sure I could step out of retirement long enough to pull off a decent blood heist.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call it a blood heist, dear. In terms of opening up evil portents that does seem a little…”

“Blood acquisition?”

“Alright, so there’s no good title.”

“They might not care if we miracle it, that’s still on the table.”

“No, you’re right. They might, and best not provoke it.”

“Right. Yeah.”

“So, blood… heist it is. Beastly.”

“I mean, it’s just blood. Isn’t it? Everyone's got it. Or close enough.”

“But what if,” Aziraphale said, “oh dear, I’ve just thought of this, what if there’s a horrible accident and then there’s not enough blood at the hospital for all the, you know… Heaven forbid, they need that blood because of an accident.”

“Well see _then_ you could miracle it. Miracling blood bags for emergency human use because there’s a shortage, that’s acceptable. They’d tut, but they’d just think we were soft, not dangerous. They’re not going to come after us for being soft. They think we’re soft already.”

“That’s quite a loophole you’re proposing there.”

“I’m good at loopholes,” Crowley said, grinning. “Trust me.”

There was a slight, sibilant hiss on the ‘s’ in trust. Aziraphale wasn’t imagining it.

“You’re looking forward to this, aren’t you?” Aziraphale asked him.

“No,” Crowley said, lying. Again.


End file.
